


Aftershock

by infiniteviking



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Uprising
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:05:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteviking/pseuds/infiniteviking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Promptfic: <i>Paige and Rinzler looked at each other across the empty space of the control room as the remains of General Tesler and the Renegade mingled together and faded into nothingness.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftershock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evillordzog](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=evillordzog).



> This fic was written for a prompt-me-with-a-sentence-and-I'll-give-you-the-next-five challenge. I'd badly wanted a resolution to the dynamic between Paige and Tesler and we never got one, and when evillordzog gave me the first sentence of what became this fic, five more lines clearly wasn't enough.

_Paige and Rinzler looked at each other across the empty space of the control room as the remains of General Tesler and the Renegade mingled together and faded into nothingness._

The enforcer, discs flaring like flames, seemed to fade in and out as Paige’s taxed systems finally rebelled, her sight flickering with a replay of the Renegade’s terrified face — unmasked at last before the end came. Rinzler had seemed to pause, just for a moment, before striking; or perhaps she’d imagined it.

Awash with heat and pain, she barely felt her palms hit the floor.

The glitching rattle grew louder. He would kill her now, and justly; the penalty for murdering a superior could be nothing else, and she could hardly resist with a fractured shoulder and the aftershocks from Tesler’s hands still stabbing through her. Shaking with the pain of another flare, she laid her disc flat on the floor, unwilling to spend her last moments syncing with its memory of flight and death.

The hum of Rinzler’s discs drew closer, and their light rippled over the cracks the swift, ugly battle had left in the tiles.

But nothing happened.

Slowly her circuits cooled, her vision focused; Rinzler’s boots were just in sight, beside Tesler’s discarded disc. The pain in Paige’s shoulder got worse, or maybe she’d recovered enough to really feel it, but she didn’t look up; she’d looked up to too many programs and found nothing but betrayal and pain, and it was _enough_ —

Rinzler’s glove closed over her disc.

Her hand shot out instinctively, clapping it to the ground, and her head whipped up to glare at the glossy black helmet, her own warped reflection telling her nothing. Ridiculous — he wasn’t going to derezz her with her own disc, not when he had two of his own.

Something had crunched in her shoulder, and another shudder ran through her, impossible to repress, her hand trembling on the disc. She couldn’t have held it down if he’d exerted the slightest effort; she wasn’t sure why she’d tried, except that not trying would have been unthinkable.

He didn’t wrench it away. Instead, his low incessant growl spiked a bit higher: a warning.

A choice.

She let go, and painfully, shakily, stood.

Rinzler rose fluidly, disc in hand, no scar on his perfect armor. Paige’s damaged shell creaked ominously, but she forced herself to stand straight, to face him. It didn’t matter. Her eyes blurred again, stinging, mercifully blotting the images as the enforcer flicked through her memories: the trap Tesler had set, the evidence the Renegade had brought to suborn her, the change in Tesler’s face when he understood that the truth was out at last, beyond explanation or recall.

"If he’d denied it," she whispered bitterly, "if he’d said anything else, I would have listened. But he laughed—"

Laughed, and then tried to kill her. Somehow, the laughter had been worse.

Gradually she realized that the blur of memory had blinked out, leaving the red ring of her disc and beyond it the four small red squares of Rinzler’s mark, the last cruel reminder of what he had once been. She raised her head, watched him watching her for any sign of regret, her face, light-streaked, as closed as Outlands stone.

Only one of her arms worked when he finally extended the disc for her to take. She’d have to repair herself one-handed, but it didn’t matter; she’d done that before.

"You have a lot of work to do, General," he rumbled, and left, soft echoes trailing him out the other end of the wide empty room.

The disc hung stiffly at her side, and she closed her eyes and let the last tears fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Now with [amazing art](http://307020.com/post/73478148850/illustration-for-vikings-aftershock-immediate) by [Winzler](http://archiveofourown.org/users/winzler)!!! 8D
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH. This is what I was envisioning. ♥ ♥ ♥


End file.
